


alarm bells

by deniigiq



Series: electric sheep [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Androids, Artificial Intelligence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 02:47:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13561083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: They took his heart first. The thing they replaced it with was so, so heavy. The weight crushed his lungs and the muscles around it. He offered his eyes, but was told that, as he suspected, it wouldn’t be enough. They took the lung under his heart instead.





	alarm bells

**Author's Note:**

> some people who read anthropomorphism wanted to know more about Matt pre-Columbia. Ask and ye shall receive.

Matt was twelve years old, fresh out of the hell that was Recruitment and entirely terrified to enter Commitment.

They took your heart during Commitment, other recruits whispered in the dining halls. They took your heart first, the voices gusting around him said, and then they took your eyes. Matt wondered what they’d do to him when they realized that his eyes weren’t heavy enough to balance their scales.

He chewed his fingers and caught the hand of a sister for it as she passed by his table.

He wasn’t scared to Commit, but the idea of becoming a Shell was horrifying. He’d heard the heavy, even--way too even—footsteps of older recruits halfway through Commitment. They sucked in air abruptly and then released it slowly as they adjusted to their new lungs. Once one of them, a girl from the timbre of her voice, smashed a stack of plates and screamed out in the hall during a meal; everyone froze. Her panic attack was cut off by her internal mechanisms; her half-scream never finished and hung almost tangibly in the air. The girl herself carried on with collecting plates as if nothing happened.

That night, in the Year 3 dormitory, Matt had joined in on the susurrus of shoulder shaking, gasping, and swallowing. Some of the kids begged for relatives under their breath, but Matt had none to beg for, so he begged for the Father instead.

 

 

Matt entered Commitment at 12 years old and 4 months. They took his heart first. The thing they replaced it with was so, so heavy. The weight crushed his lungs and the muscles around it. He offered his eyes, but was told that, as he suspected, it wouldn’t be enough. They took the lung under his heart instead. The weight left him unbalanced, he had training to learn how to course-correct for it. Eventually, they told him, it would become like second-nature.

It did.

Stick made sure of that. Like he did with everything else.

 

 

Stick terminated Matt’s training when he was coming on thirteen. He and his heavy heart and lung were returned to the orphanage from whence they came.

Commitment told him that he was on reserve. Reserves would be contacted by a member of Commitment should they ever be needed. Until then, Matt received orders to assimilate into society.

He returned to school and no one ever noticed how his heart beat perfectly while theirs stuttered and bounced along. He went to college and none of his friends or partners could tell that the skin on his chest had been grafted over twice. A few times, when money was tight, when people were horrible, when there was too much work and not enough Matt and when there was too much Matt and not enough work, he recognized that his body was trying to have a panic attack. He knew this because the blood in his hands felt freezing while blood in his face was burning; his right lung accelerated its squeezing—frantic--and his throat constricted so tight that swallowing was difficult. One time, the scream of the girl in the dining hall played over and over in his head and his throat was smothering him and his right lung was shuddering and he tried to scream too, but the only sound he made was a stunted choking noise and then his heart reset.

He woke up and its beating was the most even he’d ever felt it.

He graduated with honors. He went to work in the offices of Oakley & Watts. People liked him, he’d made some friends and had some mentors. He applied to a handful of law schools. He received an acceptance letter from Columbia, and his heart reset that night again as he held the letter and tried to sob for his dad.

Two weeks later, he received a letter from Commitment.

 

 

He was instructed to take nothing, to leave everything. Departure time was ‘immediately.’ His heart led his body; it beat slower at first, forcing everything to calm down before it set a new pace. The Commitment officer in front of him set that pace for him via the tablet in their hand.

Matt forgot that this was a thing that was possible. The fear in his head did not make it to his heart, though, and when the officer asked him to confirm his commitment his flat, solid “I confirm” rang through his body like a bell. He walked to the lab without his stick or the officer’s arm. He could hear the smile stretching into the officer’s face. Pride, he realized. They were proud.

He stepped into line with five others. For the privilege of joining the Intervention team, he traded the empty skin on his left shoulder and his right lung. He received a uniform, a set of weapons, and a place to sleep in the lab.

He received orders from his metal heart and he fought until that heart reset for half a year.

He was a favored weapon on Intervention; they put him on Stick’s team and the sneer he heard greeting him every time he set foot in their quarters had no effect on the mechanisms in his chest, even if alarm bells shrieked in his brain for hours at a time.

 

 

Stick programed and reprogramed Matt more than any other droid in Intervention. With each programming came the sense that something had changed, and Matt adapted. Movement was inhibited. Balance was adjusted; force behind motion increased. Sensory input was impaired--sensory input was greater than processing ability. New protocols were created to block and organize input.

Malfunctions in Ma--the base’s--coding occasionally interfered with incoming commands. This resulted in non-desired action. Stick programed a correction to the action. The base interfered. Stick reprogramed a correction to the action. The base interfered. Stick applied manual correction to the action. The base interfered until the heart reset.

Removal of biomaterial did not correct the non-desired action. The replacement of organic optic material did not correct the non-desired action. Introduction of improved facial optics overloaded sensory input, which resulted in the non-desired action of emitting a high volume alarm. To halt the alarm, the heart was reset.

The base interfered.

Manual correction was applied extensively.

The heart was manually reset to the tune of a room full of organic and non-organic hearts beating, maybe 20 separate entities, many signaling intense distress. A group of organic hearts gathered to the side as the heart was accessed.

“We can’t keep using resources like this.”

“Every time, _every time_ , you say that the problem’s been fixed and yet, here we are, Stick. You said he’d do a year, maybe two and here we are with six months. We are _so close_ and your bot is fucking this up.”

“He can be fixed. The problem’s in the base—”

“Not enough time; not enough money. He’s not worth it. Get rid of him, that’s an order.”

“Do you hear yourself? He’s a combat bot; he doesn’t have papers; he’s fucked to hell and back.”

“Well change his skin and give him to a fucking college or something. We don’t have time for this. Get rid of it. Now.”

 

 

The heart was booted up at Columbia University.

Sensory input was greater than processing ability.

Sensory input was greater than processing ability.

Sensory input was greater than processing ability.

Encounter with low voltage energy source interrupts sensory input.

Action desirable.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

 

 


End file.
